Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
•
The user becomes dependent on the ERP
vendor for assistance and updates (Wu &
Wang, 2006).
is resistance to change. This seems the main ob-
stacle the organizations are facing. Employees
are often reluctant to learn new technology or the
IT department is reluctant to change to due their
involvement to the existing product.
This raises the question “which factors influ-
ence the decision to accept ERP systems and
to continue using them in the post-acceptance
phase?” In the acceptance phase, the initial adop-
tion of ERP is an organizational decision although
employees are the ones who are going to use it
(Tan & Siau, 2006). Prior studies (Orlikowski,
1991; 1992) suggested that employees some-
times decide not to use ERP system, although
the organizational decision is to adopt it. In other
words, the long-term viability of an ERP system
and its radical success depend on its continued
and extensive use by individual. That's because
if the individual are unwilling to use ERP, their
work would be worsted which in turn would af-
fect the productivity (Frey, 1993). In similar lines,
Jasperson et al. (2005) advice that more research
should focus on the post acceptance usage and
continues phenomenon.
Recker & Rosemann (2007) suggest a theo-
retical model studying factors that influence the
formation of an intention to continue using a
process modeling technique. Their suggestion
has been a motivation for us to develop a model
studying the factors influence users' intention to
continue using IS (ERP in our study).
In addition, ERP implementation includes
changes in technological, operational, strategic,
managerial and organizational related components
(Ifinedo, 2007).
ERP implementation is risky and the cost
of the technology is expensive. In addition, the
implementation environment is affected by a large
number of software, complexity of the require-
ments from those systems and the need to adopt
any existing or future software to the core ERP
technology (Gyampah, 2007). But once it is suc-
cessfully implemented, it allows organizations to:
•
Integrate all their activities together with
supply chain and customer services;
•
Facilitate information flows;
•
Consolidation sources of data and data en-
tries to eliminate multiple sources of data;
•
Communicate different organizational
units to help meeting the requirements of
employees and customers alike.
Thus, researchers have devoted more efforts
at identifying factors that might be important to
avoid ERP failures. Specially, it was reported that
only one quarter of ERP projects are successful
and the other three quarters are considered as
failures projects (Rasmy et al., 2005). A number
of explanations for ERP implementation failures
have been offered in different research. Yeh (2007)
summarized them as technical (e.g. lack of techni-
cally knowledge staff and problems in software
customization and testing), economic (e.g. lack of
economic resource, underestimated the economic
resources needed and lack of planning and justi-
fication), and finally human/organizational (e.g.
lack of strong and committed leadership).
The most important and common reason in
most ERP project failures is human resources (Nah
et al., 2004). The main and the common problem
MAin focus of the chApter
A number of models have been proposed to ex-
plain users' intention to accept new IS provided
by their companies. Most of the existing studies
on users' intention focus on the phenomenon of
first-time use of IS, IS Continuance, herein referred
to as an individual's continued use of a particular
technology product, have received relatively less
attention within the IS community (Bhattacherjee,
2001). Although the initial acceptance and use are
Search WWH ::
Custom Search